Historical Marker
1980-1989
Lafayette, Lafayette County · Louisiana
In 1984 the Board of Trustees approved changing the school's name to the University of Louisiana. A state legislative act overturned the change in less than a month, and the school remained the University of Southwestern Louisiana for the time being. The same year the university took over the New Iberia Research Center, a facility incorporated in 1965 as the Gulf South Research Institute. The school had been the Southwestern Louisiana Industrial Institute at its 1898 founding, the Southwestern Louisiana Institute from 1921, and the University of Southwestern Louisiana since 1960.
Where it stands
30.21502, -92.02023 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Vermilionville — 1.4 miA living-history village of about 23 acres on Bayou Vermilion in Lafayette, opened in 1990 to interpret the Native peoples, Acadians, Creoles and people of African descent of the Attakapas region.
- Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin — 7.2 miNearly 10,000 acres of bottomland hardwood and cypress-tupelo swamp at the south end of Lake Martin, owned by The Nature Conservancy, with a boardwalk and a rookery of egrets, spoonbills and alligators.
- Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site — 13 miA bayou-side state site on former Attakapas hunting ground, with a raised Creole cottage of about 1815, a reproduction 1800 farmstead and its slave quarters, and the story behind Longfellow's Evangeline.
- St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church — 13 miThe Mother Church of the Acadians, founded in 1765 on St. Martin Square in St. Martinville, with a late 1870s Lourdes grotto and, a block away, the Evangeline Oak on Bayou Teche.